Federal legislation to protect health data has made little progress. Will that change in the Covid-19 era?

STAT May 20, 2020
Rebecca Robbins

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, health data privacy wasn’t exactly a hot topic on Capitol Hill. By and large, lawmakers stuck to scolding tech giants like Google for getting their hands on patient data gathered by hospitals and smartphone apps.

But the digital tools being deployed to combat Covid-19 have thrust the issue into the spotlight, drawing fresh interest from federal lawmakers who have swiftly introduced several new bills aimed at protecting Americans’ health data related to the coronavirus.

While the issue is getting another look from lawmakers, it’s not clear whether a divided and distracted Congress will be able to reach a consensus on how best to regulate the vast amounts of data collected by digital contact tracing tools and...

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